780: Moving From Self-Sabotage to Self-Mastery, with Shirzad Chamine

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Apr 27, 2026

Shirzad Chamine, author and leadership coach known for Positive Intelligence and Stanford teaching, explores how inner saboteurs hijack leaders. He contrasts the sage and saboteur, names common leader saboteurs like Controller and Hyperachiever, and shares quick mental fitness tools such as the 10-second fingertip-rubbing PQ rep to shift from autopilot to self-command.

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INSIGHT

Saboteurs Are Childhood Survival Programs

Saboteurs developed as childhood survival strategies and persist as an outdated operating system in adulthood.
Factor analysis across >1 million people found 10 saboteurs like Judge, Controller, Stickler, Avoider, Pleaser, Hyperachiever that still drive adult behavior.

ANECDOTE

CEOs Admit To Private Saboteur Torment

Shirzad recounts coaching top CEOs who privately suffered imposter syndrome and self-doubt despite public success.
Revealing that 'everyone has saboteurs' produced relief for leaders who thought they were alone in their struggles.

ADVICE

Start By Identifying Leader Saboteurs

Focus first on the saboteurs most common for leaders: Controller, Stickler, Hyperachiever, Hyperrational.
Use the free Saboteur Assessment at positiveintelligence.com/assessment to identify which of these dominate you.

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Shirzad Chamine: Positive Intelligence

Shirzad has been the CEO of the largest coach training organization in the world. He has lectured on Positive Intelligence at Stanford University and has trained faculty at Stanford and Yale business schools. He is the author of The New York Times bestseller Positive Intelligence: Why Only 20% of Teams and Individuals Achieve Their True Potential and How You Can Achieve Yours (Amazon, Bookshop)*.

By overusing our strengths, they can become our weakness. It’s just one of the many ways that leaders self-sabotage. In this conversation, Shirzad and I explore how to shift from self-sabotage to self-mastery.

Key Points

Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them. -Henry David Thoreau

We are all a mixed bag of Darth Vader (saboteur) and Jedi knight (sage).
By overusing a strength, you turn it into a weakness.
Rather than attempting to eliminate all our saboteurs, it’s more helpful to be intentional about quieting them down.
The four most common saboteurs that show up for leaders are Controller, Stickler, Hyper Achiever, Hyper Rational.
Sage perspective: Every outcome or circumstance can be turned into an opportunity.
A 10-second brain shift can help quiet your mind and engage the sage. One way to do this is to rub your fingers together and notice the friction to get your mind out of autopilot.

Resources Mentioned

Positive Intelligence: Why Only 20% of Teams and Individuals Achieve Their True Potential and How You Can Achieve Yours by Shirzad Chamine (Amazon, Bookshop)*
Saboteur Assessment
Dave’s assessment results

Interview Notes

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